The Painted Boy (36 page)

Just the ’bangers. Just keeping everybody safe.

“Well, look at you,” Rita said. “Once you commit, you go all the way.”

My gaze stayed on the
bandas
, climbing up the crumbling side of the bank on the other side of the dry riverbed.

“I’m thinking I should deal with the problems north of the river,” I said.

“That’s Jesus Abarca’s territory,” Rita said.

I turned to look at her. “And he’s, what? Their version of Señora Elena?”

She nodded.

“Well, he’s not doing such a good job, is he?”

Rita hesitated for a moment, then she asked, “Didn’t your grandmother teach you that you can’t fix everything?”

“She didn’t teach me anything that had any kind of clarity.”

“Well, you don’t move into somebody else’s territory unless they ask you for help. Abarca is from an old desert fox clan, and sure you could take him, but you’re going to tick off a lot of people if you do. All you’ll really accomplish is to piss away the support you’ve built up among the cousins.”

I turn my attention back to where the
bandas
disappeared. I can’t
see
them on the other side of the river the way I can here. It’s only when they come sneaking back into the south barrios.

“I look across this river,” I say, “which I still think is a stupid thing to call it, since most of the time it isn’t even a river, and all I see is a place where the
bandas
can hide out in between sneaking down here and causing trouble.”

“And I’ll tell you one last time, you can’t fix everything. That’s not the way it works. Maybe you dragons can hold a big territory, but you need to be a part of it, too. The thinner you spread yourself, the less good you’ll do.”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Most people would appreciate the peace instead of constantly looking for more trouble.”

“It’s not that.”

I don’t quite know how to explain. The
bandas
are a problem I can understand. I know how to deal with them. But there are lots of other little things going on and I don’t know if I’m supposed to handle them, too, or what. A guy arguing with his girlfriend. That could escalate, but do I step in right away, or do I wait till something actually happens, if it even does? Or what about kids fighting in a school yard? Or the guy that loses his job and comes home to his family all liquored up?

Where do I draw the line? I know where Paupau did. She only dealt with the problems that were brought to her. Except that seems so reactive. Why not deal with problems before somebody actually gets hurt?

Only that doesn’t seem right, either. So a guy goes out and gets drunk. That doesn’t mean he’s going to beat on his family when he gets home. So a couple are fighting. That doesn’t mean it’s going to escalate beyond angry words.

It seems so much easier to just go across the river and take on a new bunch of gangbangers.

“You have to be part of the community,” Rita said. “Do you think Señora Elena just sat around in her house all day?”

That brought me back.

“Actually, I do,” I said. “I know she’s doing it right now.”

“That’s only because she’s still learning to deal with being cut off from her connection to everything. Before that she was always out and around.”

“She was just sitting in her living room when you took me by the other morning.”

“That’s because she was expecting you.” I could hear the exasperation in her voice, see it in her face. “Otherwise she’d probably have been at the
taquería
with her cronies, having some tea.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not her.”

She shook her head. “Jay, you’re hopeless. What happened to the kid I first met—you know, the one with all the personality?”

I shrugged. “I can’t turn back the clock. This is what I am now.”

“Now I understand why Lupita is so depressed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look at you,” she said. “I wanted to get rid of El Tigre and the
bandas
and I knew you could do it. But I didn’t think it would turn you into a humorless robot.”

“You said something about Lupita.”

“That’s right. I convinced her to help me get you moving against El Tigre. I told her how it would be better for you and the barrio if you could connect with your dragon blood. That’s why she helped. So think how she feels about how this all turned out.”

“You wanted a yellow dragon. Don’t complain now because you don’t like what I am.”

She gave me a weary shake of the head.

“Let me leave you with this,” she said. “If you don’t actually experience the world, if you can’t appreciate it for its beauty and the joy that can come from your part in it, you’re going to turn into something just as bad as El Tigre.”

And then she stepped away into
el entre
.

I looked across the river and wondered about Jesus Abarca. Maybe I should give him a warning that if he didn’t clean up his act, I’d have to do it for him.

Instead I did what I guess dragons do: found myself a lair in this old abandoned shopping mall. Except I don’t have any treasure to guard. The only gold I have is part of the image of the dragon on my back.

 

 

I didn’t realize what a good brooder I was until I started living in the Ghost Mall. My life’s pretty much this simple routine: I eat at
taquerías
on the north side where I won’t be recognized, paying for my meals with leftover money that I took from the
bandas
. Late at night, I’ll often walk through the barrios, from East Pueblo through Barrio Histórica, from Solona down into South Presidio.

Sometimes I stop outside Tío’s house. The dogs will come up the fence to look at me, but I don’t talk to them, and I don’t go in.

Other times I’ll find myself outside of Anna’s parents’ house. If Anna’s practicing, her music makes me ache. But the dragon doesn’t care. The dragon doesn’t care about anything except our responsibility to keep the barrios safe.

Mostly I just sit in the central court of the Ghost Mall. That leaves me plenty of time to feel sorry for myself.

 

 

One day, close to two weeks after that morning at El Conquistador, I sense the arrival of someone familiar. I’m aware of her as soon as she gets off the plane, and I track her as she makes her way through the city from the airport, across the dry San Pedro River, through the Barrio Histórico, through East Pueblo, all the way to the fence surrounding the Ghost Mall. She stands there for a long time, before she ducks through one of the holes in the chain link and picks her way around the junked cars and trash to the mall. Soon I can hear the sound of her shoes in the marble hallway, as well as being able to track her passage on the medicine wheel I’ve got in my head.

She finds me in the central court, sitting cross-legged on the rim of what was once a fountain. I don’t say anything.

“” she finally asks me.

“What does it look like?” I say, refusing to speak Mandarin. “I’m being a dragon.”

“A dragon doesn’t hide in a place of squalor such as this.”

“Yeah, well, things are different now from what it was like in the old country. It’s time you got used to it.”

“Shame on you. Such disrespect.”

“Maybe I’d feel differently if you hadn’t turned me into this thing I am now.”

“The blood of the Yellow Dragon Clan is a gift. Can you not see all the good you have already done in this place?”

I shake my head. “Sure. It’s good for the barrios, but what about me? I don’t want to sound selfish, but when do I ever get a piece of my life to live for myself?”

“You have a duty to—”

I cut her off. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard all that a million times. But I’ve gotten rid of the problems here, so what am I supposed to do now? You ask why I live in this place, well, where the hell else would I live?”

“
In
the community, so that its residents can easily come to you with their problems.”

It’s funny. One of her looks used to have me shaking in my sneakers. Now I don’t care.

“So
now
I’m supposed to interact with other people?” I say. “You spend the last six years making sure I don’t have a friend, that I don’t live any kind of a normal life, and now you say I’m supposed to be a part of the community? Just how does that work?”

“You seemed to be doing well enough before your confrontation with that drug lord and his gangsters.”

“We’ve got gangs in Chicago,” I say. “We’ve got gangsters and all kinds of crap. How come you don’t deal with them the way I did here?”

“The place we protect is not in service to us,” she says. “We are in service to it. When we are needed, we will know. Or someone will come forward and request our aid. It is not up to us to judge right or wrong, only to keep the peace.”

“But—”

“Yes, there is evil in Chicago. There is evil everywhere. But so long as the peace is kept, people need to be allowed to make their own choices. We serve the emperor.”

“There are no more emperors.”

She nods. “In that you are mistaken. Now our emperors are the spirits of the places we have chosen to protect.”

“Yeah, that sounds great, except
I’m
the spirit of this place now. So I guess my job is to protect myself.”

She sighs. “You have done very well for yourself here, grandson. You took up the challenge you were given and you came forth wearing the mantle of one of the Yellow Dragon Clan. I am very proud of you. But you are not the emperor. Yellow dragons are never emperors. We serve; we do not rule.”

“There is no spirit of this place,” I tell her. “Not anymore. There’s only a medicine wheel of power spinning in my head. There’s only me.”

“Then you are not looking deeply enough.”

“Could you
please
just say something in plain language? Just for once.”

“I am speaking as plainly as I can,” she says. “I don’t have your connection to this place. I cannot find its spirit for you.”

This is pointless. Nothing has changed. We might both be big scary dragons now, but we’re not equal. At least not in her eyes. So far as she’s concerned, I’m always going to be the student who has to figure this crap out on my own. And if that’s the case . . .

“You should probably go,” I tell her.

“James . . .”

“No, really. We don’t have anything to say to each other. Not anymore. We probably never did. You call me ‘grandson, ’ but I’ve always just been this—what? Apprentice, I guess. This kid you could manipulate.”

I can see a flash of anger in her eyes, but I don’t care.

“You
are
my grandson. You will always be—”

“The kid that you and your other dragon buddies were going to put down if you decided I wasn’t using my magical superpowers properly.”

“That’s unfair.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“We wield enormous power,” she says. “Because of this there must be certain checks and balances.”

“Or you could just explain things clearly so that a kid like me doesn’t go off into the unknown without a clue.”

“The journey into our power that we must take—alone—that has always been the way of the yellow dragons.”

“Well, then all I can say is that the way of the yellow dragons is pretty messed up.”

I can see the dragon fire in her eyes now. She stands taller, her mouth a tight, stern line.

“What are you going to do?” I ask. “Attack me?”

“You have no idea how much—”

“That’ll go over well with the others, won’t it?” I say, cutting her off again. “Maybe they’ll come and put you down.”

For a moment I think she’s going to make me listen to whatever new BS she’s got to say, but she surprises me. All she does is give me a brusque nod, then turns away.

I track her as she leaves the mall. I track her all the way back to the airport where she sits glowering at her gate.

I’m not proud of how I treated her. I guess it all just boiled over—seeing her, listening to those platitudes that I’ve already heard a million times before. I’m not proud, but I’m not ready to take any of it back.

Except . . . except . . .

I can’t let go of this one thing she said.

Now our emperors are the spirits of the places we have chosen to protect
.

In this case, that’d be Señora Elena. She had been the spirit of this desert and the barrios that have been built on its skin. She used to be connected to everything the way I am now, but I took that away from her. I am the spirit of this place now.

Except . . .

I remember Rita telling me how all Señora Elena does is sit in her house, trying to deal with the loss. I just have to think of her and I can see her on the wheel and know that’s still true.

I remember Señora Elena telling me she was ready to give up the responsibility. She’d said she welcomed the opportunity.

But maybe she didn’t realize exactly what that meant.

I do. Yeah, I’ve got the big medicine wheel spinning around in my head. And maybe I feel alone, or at least disassociated from all these pinpricks of spirits that I can find on every spoke of the wheel, but that’s my own doing, isn’t it? Because I decided that I can’t be with my friends anymore. But for all my whining and complaining, the bottom line is I revel in this connection to everything.

It’s got nothing to do with the duty put on me by my yellow dragon genes and everything to do with how amazing the connection is. This sense of belonging, seeing how every little thing affects everything else, big and small and in between. I don’t care that I’m at the center of it all. I care about how everything connects and I get to see it. I get to be a part of it all.

If I had to give it up the way Señora Elena did . . .

I realize I have to go see her.